Comments on: The Danger of Obama’s Current High—a lesson from Harper Lee http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/07/25/the-danger-of-obama%e2%80%99s-current-high-a-lesson-from-harper-lee/ Human Animals at the Crossroads of Culture, Science, Religion and Media Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:47:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: projektleiterin http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/07/25/the-danger-of-obama%e2%80%99s-current-high-a-lesson-from-harper-lee/#comment-22087 projektleiterin Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:29:19 +0000 http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=2892#comment-22087 In order to be able to judge the situation properly you would have to watch when he makes the comment or you would need a good idea of his character. If his comment had been delivered with condescension then he would deserve the criticism regardless of his skin color. I had a friend who once told me that he pitied me. He probably didn't mean to be condescending, but given the context it still made him an asshole. That's when I started understanding why people don't want to be pitied. I don't think you can automatically derive from the superficial similarity between these two situation the conclusion that the phrase "I feel sorry for x" had been uttered with the same intention or compassion. In order to be able to judge the situation properly you would have to watch when he makes the comment or you would need a good idea of his character. If his comment had been delivered with condescension then he would deserve the criticism regardless of his skin color.

I had a friend who once told me that he pitied me. He probably didn’t mean to be condescending, but given the context it still made him an asshole. That’s when I started understanding why people don’t want to be pitied.

I don’t think you can automatically derive from the superficial similarity between these two situation the conclusion that the phrase “I feel sorry for x” had been uttered with the same intention or compassion.

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